Metacognitive Strategy Training Improves Driving Situation Awareness

In this study the impact of training in a metacognitive strategy on driving situation awareness (SA) is investigated. Fifty-six participants were classified into an expert group and a novice group. Driving performance was measured by the number of driving infringements participants were involved in during a simulated driving situation and SA was assessed using the Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique (Endsley, 1990). Participants were assigned randomly to either an experimental condition, where the participants were trained in modeling as metacognitive strategy, or a control condition with no training. It was found that the experts were more situationally aware than the novices, who were involved in more driving infringements. Training in a metacognitive strategy significantly enhanced SA and reduced driving infringements for both novices and experts but more so for novices than experts. These results highlight the advantage of improving SA and driver performance by using a metacognitive training strategy to enhance SA in a wide range of dynamic and highly complicated contexts.